Entry #3

 I have moved to this new home fairly recently. The walls are not as empty as they were in the first month and slowly the space is becoming more and more easy to use for my own needs but whenever I am outside of it I find myself dreaming of the moment I will leave it. The thought surprises me; I know I did not move in the best of psychological states and that I felt - and still do - forced to do so by the circumstances. But I am not blind. I can see that when within these walls I can breathe more freely than I have done in a while, I have seen some healing effects already. The willingness to create is slowly finding its way to the tips of my fingers enough, even on days when work has crushed me, even when sleep has repeatedly evaded me. I feel perplexed towards the eagerness to go and finally I have reached the conclusion that perhaps it's not the house - for the house feels like a haven, welcoming amidst all the noise and the chaos. A part of this emotion is the resistance to heal, for one can grow tired of healing, sometimes the tiredness is so familiar that it's easier to manage, and perhaps it's just that this city is finally kicking me out. I wonder sometimes whether it's the city life in general. 

  I often get into arguments with people over my headphones - I never buy expensive ones for I know that they moment they break I will immediately buy new ones for I can hardly step out of my home without them. The city has become too difficult over the year to tread around without the aid of music. The constant optical and hearing assault has proved to overwhelming and the headphones have been the only thing that has helped. They say, don't walk around listening to music for you hear no thing but the truth is that without the beat, ringing in my ears, bringing me back from sleep, I can hardly keep track of what is going around.Outside of the city border it is not so. The sounds there are more discreet and I am glad for them, relieved in their harmony. 

  I will get out of the city for a couple of days, back in the nature, I have an opened bag on the floor, trying to figure out what to place in. Except for a few changes I mostly want to bring notebooks and books, different pens, maybe another camera. I wonder if there's much of a point in bringing a camera, often the mere sight of it makes me feels guilty. This used to make me feel good I think. 

  Now photographs make me sad, like they enhance the outline of every piece that has been cut off from my life.

  The pictures of others serve as evidence, but evidence of what I know not. Their happiness, or perhaps the fact that there is not place cut out for the person I am presently in those pictures. I don't much care about the past me. But I do care about these photographs, more than I care about. I care about the fact that I am not in them and that I have become so superstitious against them.

  So I am battling against this superstition the only way I know how to: by running right at it. Slamming my body against its body until one or both of us break. I feel a near desperation at the thought of touching all the things that made me feel alive in the past and the camera is one of them. I need it in ways I never figured out in the past and that I don't care to explain in the future. Sometimes realizing that something turns you into a better version of yourself is enough justification.

  I will take then, at least for these few days, the different parts of me that used to make me feel better and carry them out of the city, among the pine-trees, sitting down and letting their scent envelop me any chance I get without the disturbance of people. I will try to concentrate this feeling, extract it into something precious, something to keep me going in the coming days, for I know many of them will be hard, cruel like the month of April in spring, bitter while pretending to be sweet and then stopping even pretending. 

Entry #2

  People keep asking you at any given point of your life, every day, "How are you?" as if that were a question they really wanted answered. I am guilty as charged of course and yet the question makes me cringe both when it is directed at me as well as others; there are times when I am tempted to tell the truth and there are times when I lie for the relief that at least there is one thing that I can control and that is just how deep the other person can perceive the shapeless thing that my life is lately - lately meaning the last eight years of my life or so. There are times when I am very attentive to every word directed towards me in case the other person actually discloses a grain of truth in their answer as to their well being. I am always trembling inwardly during those moments, dreading that grain of truth, fearing that perhaps their answer will hit so close to home that it will bring spontaneous tears to my eyes and that I won't be able to hold them back for the sake of the savoir vivre.

  It feels weird to bump into another part of yourself that has hardened more than you expected every so often. I lie down on the wooden floor, lately I have been able to enjoy music again, not always but more often than the previous months and I go through my CDs or the online collections until I find a tune that feels right at the time. I put it on and lie down and stare at the ceiling while the city sounds drift in from the open balcony door along with the scent of the incense I have burning to warn away the mosquitoes. I am trying to find some way back to things that used to cause relief. I actually try to make the house feel more like a private space rather than another place I regard like a rented hotel room - I know that eventually I will leave this one too but somehow it feels almost sacrilegious to not try to claim it as mine in the meantime, as if I am not honoring the protection it gives me from the outside world. I clean it almost methodically, on auto-pilot, I have filled it with plants, I repair things inside and small wounds, I put up things on the wall that make it feel warmer. Occasionally I have even had people over, always one person at a time with the exception of one birthday surprise that I agreed to have here. It felt good to have people over, to share food and chai and pains and memories and dreams - their dreams to be exact, I have not had dreams lately. Sometimes when I sleep I see some but when awake I don't dream of any one thing in particular except for the road. 

  This month some things have come to me more easily in spite of the fatigue - I write almost every day, I try to stretch my limbs and that has helped with the physical pain. The writing helps only in that other things I generally enjoy escape me still, perhaps not forgiving me for having neglected them for so long, and yet writing can provide some relief. Talking is another chapter entirely -  my job demands that I use my voice so much that outside of it I try to forget it even exists at all unless if I feel that what I words I will spew can somehow make me lighter. I have had some long and interesting conversations lately and they have aided me in my fight to soften the edges in me that are hardening uncontrollably. 

  A friend of mine asked me recently "And what is so foul about it, that you should lean against someone else's shoulder even if you're not in love with them, even if one of you ends up feeling more strongly, even if both of you end up hurt?" And indeed, why do I have to be so gallant, so unforgiving in admitting to be hungry? I shared my bed one night and though I did not sleep deeply, it was the most nourishing sleep I have had in a while. I felt relief in the warmth, the proximity of his body, in the fact that he chose to spend that night with me instead of his friend. I felt grateful to have a tender person lying next to me, to be allowed to touch him, to push aside for a while the guilt of seeking that permission with such hunger, such need, the way one seeks a painkiller when nothing else has managed to provide relief. Part of me wanted nothing more than to apologize and cry, like a kid that expects to be punished for something that is not even a punishable act, but instead I allowed myself to relax in the feeling that time slowed in his closeness, in his tenderness, that I felt happy and content. 

  I have been thinking a lot about that night and the one we had previously shared and the other ones we did in the past year, two lonely people giving relief to each other's wounds. And how it's the most lasting form of relationship I have had with any person that I was also sexually involved. And in truth it has helped immensely, both with feeling less lonely and also less dysfunctional. In feeling chosen and heard by a person that is not in love with me but has showed more care than people who claimed they were.

  He's trying to quit smoking now and I have managed to not smoke for over a month and wish him all the luck. When I am home and I suddenly feel a deep need to smoke I focus on the ink-stains on the floor - I had assumed they would wash off when I cleaned them but by the time I did so the pigment has seeped into the wood and so they remain there tracing some movement. I am slowly getting used to staring at those ink-stains instead of smoking, I can sometimes almost trick myself into thinking that they distract me from whatever occupies my head enough that I no longer feel the need to smoke until my lungs feel poisoned enough that my thoughts focus on something else. Sometimes I pick up different things, soap, alcohol, anything that might prove strong enough to clean them up, as an act of thanks.

  It may all sound kind of bad but in truth, the mornings are not terrible even though it's hard to get up, the sun fills up the room as if trying to nudge me forward to another day that I am occasionally willing to face. Life has grown quieter, the disappointment and anger do not always poison me. Sometimes I talk with people to whom I tell the truth. Sometimes I laugh loudly and have food that is tasty makes me feel grateful. Some simple things have taken a new character, I am reminding myself how to be alone in a healthy way, I accept that usually life is unhealthy. I dream of the mountains, of fresh ricotta with pomegranate jam, of olive trees, fresh herbs, a storm that is loud enough to cover every other sound. I said I no longer dream but I guiding my self back to it through sensations, I am beginning to dream of sensations. 

  When I was small, time had no meaning, no substance or existence, days and nights blended one into another. I always thought it was the same thing as with the difference or perspective in distances and sizes, how everything looks closer and smaller as we grow but I realized that those two are not connected in that manner. It's just that as a kid, I used to live in the present and dream of the past and the future, whereas now I live in the past and future and dream of the present. Every moment that I break out of the reverie has the taste of a tiny, private miracle.